In the summer of 1882 in Colton, Canada in a small mining town a shocking and disturbing series of events unfolded. Through old archived police records, local stories and personal visits to the town and mine shaft I have managed to put together a nearly complete record of the events. A tragic and frankly disturbing event that was seemingly lost to history. The following information may shock and disturb some.
Colton was established and named after Jeremiah Colton, an entrepreneur from America who established multiple mining sites throughout the border of the two countries. Of an official number of 13 mines only 3 remained active and profitable for more than a few years, Colton was one of them. With a population of only around 1,000 including the residents in the surrounding area the mine found steady profit in the early 1870s before reaching a hard stop at the turn of the decade due mostly to larger and more convenient mines cropping up. The town grew poor, but it made enough to justify its existence at the least and so the residents kept chugging along. Around 1882 family members of the residents noticed a sharp and immediate decline in communication. Letters effectively stopped dead after a point. Shortly after the mine stopped producing anything, nothing flowed out and several attempts to reach the foreman of the mine were met with silence. The last word out of the town was from a train conductor who had made his rounds to pick up the shipment of coal from the mine was met with a man he referred to as “wide eyed and skinny, a flat voiced man who said there were to be no more shipments, and the rails leading to the town were to be closed henceforth.” Once this news reached Jerimiah he took immediate action. A trusted advisor, Andrew Liedicker, was eventually sent to settle things and inform the town that the mine was to be shut down and they would have to relocate. Andrew didn’t return.
This drew immediate red flags and Colton reached out to Canadian authorities, asking them to investigate the town and discover what exactly was going on in the rural town. It took time but eventually a small troop of mounted law enforcement loaded up and traveled to Colton. The following is the testimony of the chief officer, Arthur Schmidt, and his experience riding into the town. The following are what I believe to be the most informative bits.
“The trip was just under a 2 days ride, the men and I were tired and ready to get the whole thing over with. But moods changed quickly, with less than a few hours ride left there was a change in the woods. Immediately a rank smell washed over, like some intense festering rot, and the trees and plants seemed to grow more and more withered as we followed the trail. Dark grey clouds formed early on and plagued us from above with no end in sight. We emerged from the forest to a circular clearing, with long, outstretching dead grass and rotted tree trunks that jutted out in the field. The path to the town was broken and overgrown with withered plants and the sign was completely dilapidated, letters hanging or missing from it. The men were sick, and it took a moment to convince them to move forward. As we crossed the threshold into the town we could sense something terrible had happened. Some of the homes were burned, some fresh and some older but all mangled in some fashion, and the smell of fire still clinging in the air.”
“There were no signs of life, man or otherwise, but there was the stench of death. There were childrens toys and clothes scattered throughout the streets. The company store and saloon were razed and burned to a pile of rubble and the tracks were torn apart as if for scrap. There were bodies burned to a crisp amongst the rubble, by their size it seemed to be all miners. And then we came upon the mineshaft itself, and the sights we saw are something I will never forget. There were two nooses strung above the entrance, one of which still contained a hanging corpse, the other seemed to have rotted and slipped out of the rope and lay almost melting into the dirt below. Fear overtook the company and We unmounted and walked into the shaft, there was an intense humidity coming from within and we were drenched in sweat shortly after we entered. The stench of death was stronger than ever, the source was not in question but the severity was and we pressed forward against all instinct. It was like a maze, shafts leading to nowhere, twisting and turning, it was oppressive in every sense. There was not much of anything for a stretch, we followed the smell to stay on track. Some of the men were forced to stop and turn back because they couldn’t stand the smell… It went deep, and as the further we ventured the more we noticed the steel used in the bracings were made of the missing train tracks, it was crude and made us even more apprehensive to follow through… eventually we came upon a sharp and distinct cutoff between the man made tunnel and the natural cavern that they seemed to have dug into. There were more horrors inside.”
A rounded cave with wet, dripping stalactites high above dropping onto what I would call a series of effigies. They were crafted of human bodies, posed as if crucified and mangled and poised onto the steel railroad beams. There must have been a dozen of them, all women and placed in a circular state around the cavern. Strange items were hung from the walls, some seemed to contain various human body parts. They were surprisingly clean, only some strips of flesh could be seen on any of them. The floor was sticky with blood, most of the men refused to go further. Myself and two others were the only ones who would volunteer to continue, and so we did. The room contained what looked to be a makeshift kitchen, dried meat clung to old cast iron pots, dingy and discolored now. There were piles of paper, notes and lists mostly. The digging had continued from the far end of the cabin and it dropped almost straight down, a crude ladder was hammered into the rocks and against better judgment I descended. The decorations persisted and the ladder became more and more difficult to manage. Eventually we reached a precipice at the end of the ladder, another cavern, but much much smaller, tightly packed with an empty black abyss in the center. From here the smell and the heat had reached its strongest point. We couldn’t see the bottom, no matter how bright our torches. I decided to drop one down to test the height, the flame fluttered and spun and disappeared below. I never saw it land, I never heard it reach the floor. One final whiff and a breeze of heat was enough to send us straight back up…”
The officer made this report and by all accounts never decided to speak of the chilling incident again. The troops gathered what evidence they could from within the shaft and condemned the mine; men were called out in the coming months to level the town and dynamite both the cavern and the entrance. The evidence was filed and the case was tossed aside to be forgotten. Although forgetting is not something anyone who visited the town were able to do easily, the officers would complain frequently of nightmares related to the situation. The men who came to tear down Colton had suffered through near fatal illness after spending too much time there, though this has been officially attributed to them using the supposedly tainted well water. Although the officers eyewitness of the events is the only complete one of the town and the incident it seems he left a few key elements out.
Some of the side paths in the mine lead to rooms covered in writings, and stained occasionally with an absurd amount of blood. Some of the bones found on the walls were identified as immature children. There was another section with similar effigies, designed like a demented prayer circle. Briefly mentioned by one of the workers sent to dynamite the inner cavern entrance was the existence of a particularly large shrine of conjoined skeletal remains. What it was clearly and profoundly affected the man as he took his own life only a year later, several of the arriving officers and workers had suffered serious mental collapse shortly after as well, not all recovered. There was also only a single mention of a pile of remains sat beside the food station in the cave, many of which were riddled with teeth marks. All in all, despite this horrifying account there are surprisingly little descriptions of what befell the town and the mineshaft. It seems like nobody even tried to find an answer.
There seemed to be a deliberate attempt to downplay and leave out the details of what was in that mine. Whether it be for their own sake to forget the ordeal, or to hide something about it which can only be guessed at. But it was this very hunch I had that drove me out the closest population center to the old town. I scoured every record-keeping facility in the place and asked around for information. Some people knew the name and very few older folks knew the legend. I was pointed towards their town hall and local library. It was in these buildings that I found the testimonies, list of evidence discovered and generally whatever records were kept about the incident. But the most eye opening and revealing items I found were diary entries of some of the town’s women. The picture painted by them gives the clearest recollection of events. It was shocking that nobody had made an attempt to read these entries, but after reading through them I could understand how one would rather leave this in the past. The following is abridged to help make a coherent account of what occurred.
From the diary of Annebelle Leblanc, wife of one of the miners.
November 06, 1882
“The cold is hitting us sooner than expected. This will be our first winter with Margaret and one that we will have to work harder than ever to get through. Gregory works hard, all the men do of course, but it seems the need for us has grown smaller and smaller in the last few years. He is irritable, more so now than ever before. I imagine our time to leave will be coming soon, lest we set out here and starve and freeze as the money dries up. I’ve read about what happens to these places. Gregory doesn’t like the idea of it, not at all, but it’s a reality we must face. Can’t say i’d be too unhappy moving back to Montreal though, never liked this place and never wanted to raise a child here, but what choice do we have. We follow the work, and follow the money.”
November 13 1882
“Gregory has been coming back more and more exhausted this week, and he’s been spending longer and longer days down there. He doesn’t like to talk about what goes on in there much to my detest. I’ve been speaking to Emma down the road and she tells me the men have found something in the mines, something that may be more valuable than just coal. I guess he doesn’t want me to get my hopes up, the prospect of finding gold or silver could change everything, maybe he wouldn’t have to poison his lungs anymore down there. Still I wish he would talk, he barely says a word anymore.”
November 18 1882
“Damn that man, damn him. He hasn’t spoken a word to me or Margaret in days, he comes home to clean up and change and goes right back to the saloon. He has a family damn it, he owes it to his daughter to be here and I told him as much. It didn’t go well, of course it didn’t. He and all his friends, asses the lot of them. He stormed off and went right on down the road, no care for his crying daughter.”
November 23 1882
“Each day has been getting worse, I tried yelling at him and pleading with him but he gets more and more violent every time. I finally called him out on it, I told him to tell me what they found down there, why they’re spending so much time in that saloon where we aren’t allowed. He didn’t like that at all… he grabbed me, pulled hard and twisted a muscle, all in front of our child. He screamed and screamed at her as she cried and kicked the door down to leave.”
November 28 1882
“I’ve had it, I will not be ignored and left to rot in this house while he pisses away what little funds we have at that damn bar. I’m already preparing to send out a letter to Mom, I’ll be leaving the first chance I get, next time that train rolls through I’m going with it. My only comfort has been with writing, Gregory’s illiteracy and utter lack of care for me has allowed me to keep it secret, without this I would have gone insane long ago. The train will be back this week, I just pray my daughter can survive the journey west.”
December 10 1882
“We didn’t make it, the train didn’t come. I don’t train is never coming again, they’ve abandoned us. I haven’t been able to write, Gregory stopped going to work, and when I asked about it he grew belligerent. I wasn’t allowed to speak to Emma, or any of the other women. Earlier last week Gregory came back one night with some kind of totem etched in white and without speaking, without any emotion on his face he sat in his chair and stared at it for nearly two days straight. No food or water, I swear to God I didn’t even see him blink. Eventually he did get up, walked right out the door with the thing. I saw the other men leaving at almost the exact same instant, they piled down into the mine. I have seen him maybe once or twice since then. Snow has been pouring down on us, I made an attempt to leave, just to see how I would feel, but the cold was unbearable almost instantly, Margaret would be dead on the first night. Our food stock is running low fast, and I have my doubt that any animal is out there in all this cold. I don’t know what to do.”
December 19 1882
“I haven’t eaten in nearly 2 days, Margaret is malnourished, Gregory hasn’t returned in a week straight. I heard chanting from the mine the other night, religious-like. And then I heard screams, they sounded like women. I can’t leave the house, I see the men take shifts lurking in the woods, I watched them drag Emma back as she took off running, they took her into the mine. I’m going to die here, we’re all going to die here.”
December 20 1882
“A horrible green glow has emerged from the mouth of the mine, the chanting is louder than ever. I watched them drag two more women and their children down there. I won’t do this, I won’t die waiting like this. There is a substantial store of lantern oil in the general store, if I can get to it I’ll burn this place to the ground, I’ll take everyone with me.”
December 25 1882
“They took Margaret, Lord forgive me, please Lord know I did everything I could. I took a knife to one of them, cut him deep over and over. One of them hit me with the blunt end of a pickaxe, I awoke and she was gone, and they chained me here. I saw a terrible, terrible look in their eyes, maddening to even look at. These chains are old, rusted. This will be my last entry. I’ll leave this so those who find us know what happened here. I’m burning this down tonight, I’m killing them all tonight and I will watch as the fire strips their flesh from their bones and I will bathe in it, I will bask in it. God forgive me.”
It seems Anne kept her word, the miners bodies found burned and some mutilated in the homes seems to suggest she got what she wanted in the end, at least partially. Although this tells us nothing of the ultimate end for the miners, only a little over a dozen bodies of the men were found when by all accounts they were in the hundreds. No bodies were ever reported in the surrounding woods either. Unfortunately the accounts of Mr. Schmidt and Mrs. Leblanc are the most complete narratives relating to this incident and although they paint a detailed and grizzly picture they only barely scratch the surface. The acts seem more ritualistic than anything based out of necessity, especially when you consider the men purposefully turning away the only reasonable way for them to leave safely. This was the wall I finally hit after weeks of research, a disturbing and unsatisfactory conclusion to a horrific slice of North American history. I felt this wasn’t enough, I knew this wasn’t enough. The speed in which the crew left suggests to me that they didn’t finish the demolition of the mine, only blocking the entrance and dispersing the rubble of the buildings. So, using maps of the time I found coordinates to where the mine would be now. Deep in the forest, a 2 day trip at the least. I have enough experience hiking, and I have a small crew of friends willing to go with me. The only logical place to go now for the truth is to the source, to the mine itself, I would have to go to Colton.